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DHAKA: Police in Bangladesh have arrested seven suspected members of a sex trafficking gang that used video-sharing app TikTok to contact and lure young women and girls before
selling them for sex in neighbouring India, an official said on Friday.
A video of a Bangladeshi woman being tortured and sexually assaulted went
viral on social media last week, prompting the investigation by police, who
said the traffickers had enticed the women with promises of well-paid jobs
across the border.
“These girls are mostly from lower-income groups. They are told they’ll
become stars in India. They are also promised jobs in malls. But these were
lies,“ said Mohammad Shahidullah, the police official investigating the case.
“Their dreams are shattered once they cross the border. That’s when they
are tortured and forced to have sex in different hotels. The traffickers take
videos of them and threaten to release those in case they resist,“ he added.
The suspected “coordinator” of the trafficking ring was arrested last week in
India - where police said the viral video had been filmed, while the seven
new arrests took place in Bangladesh this week.
Shahidullah said officers were still trying to find out how many women had
been trafficked by the gang.
“One of the arrested individuals told us he sent at least 1,000 people across
the border ... We still don’t know if that’s true,“ he told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation. -Thomson Reuters Foundation
